Republicans' War on the Midterms: Gerrymandering Has Limits, Trump Does Not

Will the Democrats win both houses of Congress in this year's midterm elections?  Will they only win one?  Will any wins be negated by Republican corruption?  Will the midterms happen at all?  People who oppose the Trump/Republican regime are becoming rather confident.  I remain decidedly pessimistic.

As I noted in an abbreviated Dorf on Law column this past Thursday, the Review of Democracy (RevDem) "is the online journal of the CEU Democracy Institute (the non-university part of Central European University."  Last week, RevDem published my two-part analysis of the many ways in which the Republicans could hold onto power this year, notwithstanding polling currently favoring Democrats.  In "The Threats to Nullify (or Ignore) the US Midterm Elections are Very Real," I made my only firm prediction, which is that Donald Trump will not outright cancel the elections.  After all, he likes to call himself a winner, and his favorite dictatorial role models like to hold sham elections, so why miss out on all that?

The remainder of that first column described two key methods that Republicans are using to make sure that they "win" the midterms, which is to say that they would be able to point to vote counts that favor them, no matter how many people in fact oppose them.  They do this, as always, by preventing people from registering to vote and then by stopping the remaining unwashed masses who somehow managed to navigate the registration process from actually voting.  At one point, I offered this caustic observation: "Trump’s recent obsession with ending mail-in voting can be understood as part of this.  After all, if citizens can vote without showing up at a polling place, how can neo-Nazis and Klansmen terrorize them into not voting?"

In "US Midterms: Will The Results Matter?" I moved on to the post-election landscape and described how gerrymandering prevents even legally cast votes from changing election outcomes, which is relatively familiar ground to which I will return below.  Beyond that evergreen problem, I added that some Republican state legislatures are becoming more open about their contempt for democracy by trying to change the rules for state ballot initiatives, which is designed to prevent voters from overriding their unrepresentative legislative bodies.  In a New York Times column that I cite in the piece, the President of Utah's Senate offered this revealing moment: "We live in a republic.  We will not let initiatives driven by out-of-state money turn Utah into California."

So you see, it is all about the sanctity of listening to local voters, whom we trust to choose us.  But obviously we cannot trust them so much that we think we can win without gerrymandering.  And we certainly cannot trust them to be able to think for themselves in the face of out-of-staters throwing around big bucks.  A republic, it seems, is a place where the voters are great, so long as Republicans can ignore them.

My second RevDem column also asks whether -- if somehow Democrats win the midterms under the crazy rules that Republicans have been putting in place -- a new Congress would even be recognized in the normal transition of power, to say nothing of whether Trump would ignore a Congress that was in Democrats' hands.  I noted that his abuses of power thus far (including ignoring the courts) have occurred in situations where his political viability is not under existential threat.  If he is barely tethered now, how much worse will things become if Democrats leap over all of the hurdles that stand between them and a return to power?

The hope among the people who believe in democracy (representative and otherwise) is that a big enough win by Democrats will make everything work out.  Noting Hungarian voters' recent surprise ouster of the autocrat Viktor Orban, news sources are publishing articles with titles like "Orbán's defeat is a win for democracy and a warning to Trump, analysts say," and "Nine lessons for the US from Viktor Orbán’s defeat."  The latter column includes this sub-headline: "As US elections approach, the Hungarian prime minister’s loss is a reminder that history does not march relentlessly toward autocracy."

Indeed it does not, but that is not a plan.  We can be sure that the "warning to Trump" is being taken very seriously inside his bubble, which means that Orban's loss might end up making it more difficult to end Trump's reign, not easier.  Trump, after all, does not know any other way to respond than to attack and dig in.  On the weirder side of that default trait, we saw him respond to the incident at the White House Correspondents' dinner by somehow claiming it as proof that he should be allowed to build his ridiculous ballroom.  Just as Republicans used to respond to any news by using it as an excuse for a tax cut -- not kidding: In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, House Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay said this: "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." -- now every bit of news is taken as proof that Trump should always get his way.

More generally, the idea that Trump would take Hungary as some kind of cautionary tale, that is, as a reason to be more careful and do fewer things to enrage voters, is utterly fantastical.  The lesson to be learned from that tale will instead be: "Don't be weak like that loser Viktor."  I mean, the guy even conceded!

There is, however, an important aspect of gerrymandering that has received a lot of play among the anti-Trumpers in recent days.  I wrote in my second RevDem column last week:

While California’s Democratic-led legislature has responded in kind, the numbers do not favor the Democrats nationwide, because gerrymandered Republican state legislative majorities control too many states. Therefore, a much bigger swing of voters against the Republicans would be needed to retake the House.

At the time that I was writing that column, Virginia's voters were in the process of approving a California-like initiative to allow the Democrats who dominate their state's politics to counter-gerrymander their congressional districts in a way that is likely to add four seats to the Democrats' column in November.  Jennifer Rubin (former columnist for the now-demolished Washington Post op-ed page) argued on her "Contrarians" substack that this was proof that Democrats will have the upper hand.  She ran through the numbers in the states and found that it is currently essentially a wash, which might suggest that I was wrong to say that Republicans "control too many states."

Rubin allowed that "Florida may try a belated re-redistricting," and indeed J.C. Bruce (a journalist who now runs an excellent one-man operation in the Sunshine State called "Tropic Press") reports today that Florida's outgoing governor "is slavishly obeying President Donald Trump’s call to rig the midterm elections in favor of Republicans so he won’t lose his G.O.P. majority in Congress."  The state's congressional delegation went from 14-13 in favor of Republicans in the 2018 elections to 20-8 now (actually 20-7, due to a recent resignation), with the desperate governor's new map set to make it 24-4.

Rubin also correctly pointed out that "many Republicans are nervous that the scheme will backfire if Hispanics, as has been the case in primary voting, turn out heavily for Democrats, especially in the Miami area. In short, Republicans may well wind up losing ground."  Similarly, the "Nine lessons ..." column linked above noted that "[o]nce it passes a ‘tipping point’, a thinner Republican majority can transform a formally safe seat into a contested one."

And that truly is a key point about gerrymandering.  After "packing" as many Democrats as possible into a tiny number of safe seats for the minority party, the "crack" part of the "pack and crack" strategy is designed to give Republicans a bunch of districts in which, say, 45 percent of voters are Democrats who will never be able to elect a Democrat to Congress.  That does indeed mean that a rather small shift of voters from the reliably Republican camp could flip some seats.  In fact, that might be what happened to Orban, who saw his strongholds flip against him.

I suppose if gerrymandering were the only thing to worry about, this could be a reason for overall optimism.  But this is also nothing new, in that it is always true that gerrymandering must be based on predictions that voting patterns will never change.  The point is how much of a swing is necessary.  Ten years ago, the estimates were that Democrats would need something close to a national 10-point win to oust Speaker Paul Ryan.  (Remember Mr. FlimFlam?)  They got that in 2018, and Nancy Pelosi became Speaker for two terms.

So yes, there is always a scenario in which an extreme enough swing can upend political verities, which is especially important in the context of Republicans' failure to fully nationalize the 2026 gerrymandering push.  (Strangely, Indiana said no.)  Optimism -- measured optimism, in any event -- is thus based on reality on this issue.  This would take one of the weapons out of Republicans' armory this year, but unfortunately they have many others, and they are no longer afraid to go nuclear.  (Just in case anyone has forgotten, the entire Republican Party has not only forgiven January 6 but now fully excuses it.)

Finally, and to be complete in analyzing midterm matters, I will point out that the dreams of a big Democratic sweep into power in the Senate are unrealistic at best, even if Republicans do not pull out all the stops.  Democrats need to pick up four seats.  Their open seat in Michigan is not a sure thing.  Even if they hold that seat, they need to run the table on the seats that are even within shouting distance of competitive: Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas.  Seriously?  How many times will people believe that they can crack Texas?  Senator Beto O'Rourke might have some things to tell us.

I do understand why people like Rubin have chosen to be optimistic.  Both optimism and pessimism are contagious, and she is among those who want to encourage people to believe that positive outcomes are possible.  That, however, is not my job.  As always, pleasant surprises are possible.  Hoping for them is still not a plan.

- Neil H. Buchanan